At least be useless

I wasn't the one who said it:

In the same way, you, when you have done all you were ordered to do, say: We are useless servants; we have only done what we were supposed to do. Luke 17.10

According to the Lord Jesus, the definition of useless is not someone who is idle or just sits around and does nothing all day. His take on it was that the useless person is the one who does only what he should have done — in other words, nothing extra, no more than what was expected of him.

Of course, the goal is to become a useful servant, someone who exceeds expectations. But we know such people are rare.

The problem is that there are too many people who need to improve a lot just to achieve "useless" status. That's because they don't do even what they are supposed to.

If you have no ambition to become a useful servant, then at least be useless. Less than that is to waste your existence.

The size of faith

Jesus censured the disciples' little faith before the great tempest (Matthew 8:26). Again, when they lacked faith to set a boy free, He said to them, "If you have faith as a mustard seed... And nothing will be impossible for you" (Matthew 17:20).

How can we measure faith? How big must my faith be in order for me to achieve my dreams or conquer the promises of God?

The Lord compared the size of faith to a mustard seed because, among the rabbis, the mustard seed was commonly used to illustrate something very small. The size of a mustard seed is about the diameter of human hair, but a mustard tree grows up to 5 meters tall.

An act of faith pleases God. When Jesus saw a widow place everything she had on the altar, He considered her offering more valuable than all the other offerings put together.

Quantity is not a synonym for quality - especially when it comes to faith. The rich people offered what had been leftover, which represented their "leftover" faith.

But the widow gave all she had. In other words, she deposited all her faith in God's provision; she would depend exclusively on the Almighty.

This is the quality of faith that draws God's attention and shows its size.

The size of our faith is directly related to how dedicated to God we are, because faith is an attitude of total dependence on God. The more we depend on Him, the bigger our faith is. The less we depend on Him, the smaller our faith is. Unbelief means independence from God. The more independent from God a person is, the more of an unbeliever he becomes.